INTRODUCING MR FORD HARVEY

September 27, 2011

There is a certain type of person. I don’t know how it begins. But they become a target. For others. Very early in their lives. When they first start to go to school. We had a guy like that at school. His name was Brady. He did get picked on. At school. And when he got picked on he would cry. It wasn’t so much that other kids like to see him cry. They were embarassed by it. As if it was a bad reflection on all kids. Brady and I became friends one summer. Not really friends. I was kind of told to go over to his house. And play with him. Brady had a lot of comic books. I had a lot. So we traded. The trade wasn’t fair. I knew it. Brady gave me 10 comics for each one of mine. My avarice overcame my sense of right and wrong. When I got home my father asked me what I had. I explained it to him. He was pissed. Forced me to go to Brady’s and give him back his comics. I didn’t hear much about Brady after elementary school. Until I was about 40. I heard that he died of a heart attack. It made me wonder if he had gone through his whole life being taken advantage of, being bullied. It made me feel sick to my stomach.

……………………….

INTRODUCING MR. FORD HARVEY

I don’t know if it’s important what his name is. It seemed important to his parents. They named Ford after the American car companies. Began to decline. To boost morale. On the line. Ford was born in Detroit. The asshole of America. Or so Ford’s father thought. When he was laid off. It was the days of Nixon. And television investigations. Liddy and Hunt and Dean and Mitchell dominated the headlines. And then Ford was born. Delivered off an assembly line of statistics. Right handed. Caucasian. Receding hairline. No one paid much attention. Except the insurance company. They’d prefer that they didn’t know. His name was Ford Harvey. They never bothered to give him a middle name. No time. Ford had always taken second place.

There was a kid named Kuris. He’d been born in Nova Scotia. His father worked in the mines. Coal. Kuris was a Slovak. And he liked his soft drinks. He liked them so much that he drank too quickly. Spilt his soft drink on the floor. Hours before. But no one had noticed.

Ford walked through the drug store’s sliding doors and began his carefree adventure down the ramp. When Ford slipped on the soft drink, his feet were thrown toward the ceiling. The rest of his body obediently followed suit. And he landed on his back. Ford looked up at the ceiling of the drug store. This isn’t right. And then the pain hit. Like knives in his back. Oh mother, that doesn’t feel good. And then he passed out.

And for several moments Ford Harvey lay there. As good as dead. Until Paul McGregor was told a story by a customer about the adventures of a man who entered the drug store and slipped on the floor and landed on his back and for all intents and purpose seemed dead.

Paul rushed over to the sprawled victim and slipped on the same patch of soft drink spilt by a kid named Kuris and landed on his back. And Paul looked up at the ceiling. This is unusual. And waited a moment before passing out. Ford opened his eyes. Glanced over. At Paul. And began to cry.